Renewal Invoice Status - Grace Period with no fee

[chris0055]

Hi all,

We configured our system to the following:

Domain Grace and Redemption Fees Enabled

Domain Grace and Redemption Fee Billing Generate a new invoice for the domain renewal including any Grace and Redemption Fees

In our domain pricing configuration, we have set:

Grace Period: 35 days, and Fee $0

Redemption Period: 0 days, and Fees $0

 

Basically we want to keep the option that client can renew the domain at no extra cost during the grace period. Should we be expecting WHMCS to create a new invoice and cancel the current invoice after the expiration date (when domain enter grace period)? or the invoice will remain in UNPAID status until the domain reaches Redemption Period (we're not offering renewal at this status) and becomes cancelled?

Now our system does not cancel the invoice after expiration date. No new invoice is generated while domain enters grace period.

[brian!]

19 hours ago, chris0055 said:

Basically we want to keep the option that client can renew the domain at no extra cost during the grace period. Should we be expecting WHMCS to create a new invoice and cancel the current invoice after the expiration date (when domain enter grace period)? or the invoice will remain in UNPAID status until the domain reaches Redemption Period (we're not offering renewal at this status) and becomes cancelled?

https://docs.whmcs.com/Domain_Grace_and_Redemption_Grace_Periods

Quote

The Grace Period typically lasts between 0 and 45 days, and often does not have any additional costs associated with it allowing a domain name to still be renewed at the regular rate.

so the grace period is just borrowed time that you can give (when registrars allow it) to customers to provide payment for their domain renewals... it's worth remembering that a domain will go into a grace period (if it exists for that TLD) after expiry date regardless of any setting in WHMCS and the client can renew at any time until redemption... WHMCS doesn't control the real-life grace period length, only what itself does in the grace and redemption periods (e.g charge fees).

19 hours ago, chris0055 said:

Now our system does not cancel the invoice after expiration date. No new invoice is generated while domain enters grace period. 

that's correct - when a domain expires and enters a grace period, then nothing has changed from a WHMCS point of view - the invoice is still outstanding.

one other useful piece of information to mention are that grace periods are not really for you to define their lengths yourself - they are decided by the registries/registrar and so you need to follow what they set for each TLD... so for a .com, a grace period of 35 days is usually fine (WHMCS defaults to 30, some registrars allow 40); but for a .eu domain, it wouldn't be applicable as they don't have a grace period and expire on expiry (some registrars insist on payment days before expiry date) and go straight into redemption... so in that instance, if you set a grace period for .eu of 35 days (the default value in WHMCS is 0), then it's irrelevant to real life as the domain will already be in redemption.

[chris0055]

Thanks for the information Brian.

We do have a defined grace period length for each TLD from our registrar so that part is good. Its great to make sure our invoice status updates accordingly.

We want to make sure that WHMCS cancel the invoice when invoice status changes to expired from grace period (no redemption) and clients can no longer renew the domain. It seems like we're on the right setting now.